The Cry of the Wolf

by Melvin Burgess

  He took out a sleeping-bag from his pack and wrapped himself up in it. He fed Jenny, ate some dried fruit and then brewed himself chocolate over a small primus stove. As he drank it on the edge of the beach before sleep, he allowed himself to speculate on the good turn his luck had taken that the animal he most wanted to destroy in the whole world had come to him in this way.

  He recalled his feelings when he sighted the print on the patch by the gentians. They would always be lucky flowers for him now. As he remembered, something came into his mind that had been floating uncomfortably about ever since his doubt about Jenny had first risen.

  Those prints he had found outside the garden, on the roadside – there had been something odd about them, something he had been thinking about when Jenny began to track …

  In his mind’s eye, the memory of the prints was so clear he could study them in his imagination. Yes. The wolf had appeared to run first one way and then another, but now he could see this was not so. The difference was faint but unmistakable. He was certain. There were two sets of prints. His quarry had left the garden and returned hours later. Jenny was not leading him towards the wolf at all …

  With a violent clarity the Hunter knew that Greycub was not ahead of him as he had thought but behind him. A cold breath blew on his neck; it seemed to him that the wolf even now sat behind him, the pink tongue and cruel teeth inches from his bare neck. His hair bristled, he shuddered and he turned himself slowly round to face – only the night. Quickly he slid his hand under his jacket and took out his hand gun. Jenny woke and came to lick his hand. He watched her, thinking, ‘Traitor!’ but saying nothing. He was no longer the Hunter but the prey. For the whole morning death had been close behind him and he had known nothing of it.

  He did not sleep that night. He listened. But the wolf was clever. Perhaps he had seen the gun being drawn out from under his jacket. There was nothing all night.

  As he kept his vigil he made his plans. This was to be no ordinary hunt. The normal situation, where the animal knew nothing of the killer on its track, was reversed. The wolf knew where he was and he had no idea where the wolf was. Not only that but his dog, his own little Jenny, was now not to be trusted. She could be leading him anywhere, even to his own death.

  At this thought, and the idea that she had fooled him out of his prize five years ago, the Hunter wanted to shoot the little dog. But not yet. If he did that he would not have her nose to follow the track the wolf had laid down. He still needed her. The Hunter had one great advantage. He knew Greycub was behind him. He had no need to find the animal; he need only wait for the animal to find him.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he whispered to himself.

  The next day’s hunting was the most uncomfortable he had ever experienced. He could not get rid of that sense of danger from behind. He felt those cool eyes on his back, imagined the animal sniffing at his tracks, knowing how far ahead he was, watching him from concealed places. Was the wolf a mile behind him or only a few metres? All the time he concentrated his eyes on the tracks ahead, his ears strained behind for the slightest crackle or hiss of breath, listening for a sudden rush of soft paws and the thud as the wolf launched itself at the back of his neck. This feeling was all the worse because he had to conceal his knowledge that the wolf was behind him. He did not want to lose his only advantage. Little Jenny sniffed so eagerly in bushes, wagged her tail, seemed to be enjoying the hunt. It seemed to him that she was laughing at him the whole time. Well, let her laugh. She would find out, in time …

  At no point on his route was he able to look back upon his path. Where he did cross open space, behind him was always a well-covered area, from which he could easily be observed without observing. And yet this never happened in reverse. In other words, the path they took was so designed that the wolf could often see him, but he could never see the wolf.

  Only at one point did this arrangement fall through, when he reached the shale ridge that led to the peninsula. As he turned the corner to leave the mainland and go onto the peninsula he entered an area of dense short bushes, and from there was able to see a whole long stretch of open coastline, without himself being seen. Admittedly most of this was hidden by ridges of rock twenty or thirty metres up from the sea, but there was one small gap the Hunter noticed of perhaps five metres about half a mile from where he now stood. He knew the wolf had not yet crossed this gap, because to do so he would have to bring himself out into the open. Crouching concealed by the bushes, the Hunter would be able to watch the wolf cross this short space and so confirm his suspicions and get an idea of how far behind him the animal was.

  Such a short space as five metres – and nearly half a mile away – would take the wolf a fraction of a second to cross at a run; the Hunter could miss it if he rubbed his eyes. He sat peering through the dense branches of the hawthorn bushes and waited. Jenny kept tugging at his clothes and whining, urging him on but he ignored her until at last she lay down and buried her nose in her paws. The warm sun could easily have made him drowsy after missing his sleep that night, but the excitement, and the chance of gaining the upper hand here kept him sharp and alert.

  When it came it was even briefer than expected. A flash of gold and silver, nothing more, a snap of the fingers and it was gone. The wolf flew across that gap; it was impossible to get a clear look – it could have been a fox or a dog or a sunbeam shot from behind a cloud. But the Hunter knew.

  All his fear was now gone. His knowledge was again superior, the wolf had become as clear as glass to him.

  ‘You’re dead,’ he whispered to himself. He ran his eyes along the thin rows of ridges that approached to within a few metres of the bushes in which he hid. A long, wide smile spread over his jaws and remained there, even while his eyes, flickering over the terrain ahead, indicated that his pleasure was over and he was already plotting the circumstances of Greycub’s death.

  The Hunter’s eyes rested on the point where the last ridge finally dipped out of sight into the earth. He could see his own footprints coming from behind it where he had followed the wolf; and now the wolf was following his tracks. There was every reason to suppose that within a few minutes, Greycub would emerge into the open at the same place. He would be exposed. He would go for the nearest cover – the very bushes in which the Hunter now hid.

  In the few seconds it would take Greycub to cover that distance he would be dead. There was plenty of time. The Hunter need only be alert for the wolf’s arrival. He admired the wolf for laying such a cunning plot, and he admired himself even more for so certainly finding the one point of weakness in it, the one moment when the wolf would be exposed.

  It was to his advantage that the wind was in his face; the wolf would be unable to catch his scent. He took off his pack and placed the rifle on the ground before him. He would push himself into the bushes, lie on his belly and wait for the streak of gold that would certainly rush from behind the shale ridge, straight towards him.

  But first there was a problem. Jenny was not to be trusted. She sat to one side, watching his preparations curiously, not wagging her tail now, he noted grimly, but whining under her breath.

  ‘Here, girl, here Jenny,’ he called. She did not come straight away and he lunged for her. She tried to run, but she was old and slow, and he had her by the collar. Struggling desperately, but not daring to growl, Jenny dug into the earth, frantically straining back, away.

  ‘Little bitch,’ he hissed, and took a sharp knife from his belt …

  The Hunter rested the barrel of his gun on a nobble of hawthorn root and settled himself into the undergrowth. The ground was rough with roots and the stems of the hawthorns, and covered in dead shoots, sharp with thorns and spines. He noticed none of it. He expected Greycub in minutes. He calculated the wolf would fall dead about five metres in front of him, provided his first shot got him in the right place, as he was in no doubt it would. He could feel his mind sliding down the barrel of the gun, reaching along the line of sight, right down to the edge of the sha
le ridge. His whole being focused in this way. When the signal came his finger would move smoothly and discharge the little pellet of lead into the wolf’s head. He regarded the animal as already dead. Nothing was more certain.

  14

  GREYCUB HAD NEVER been very far behind. Mostly he dropped back and followed the trail by scent, but every now and then he came within sight of the man. His behaviour was cautious, slow. He checked every step of the way with his nose on the ground and in the air; he listened and watched. When the Hunter camped on the beach he too had not slept, but waited, out of sight but within earshot of any activity, among the boulders scattered at the back of the beach. He did not bother stopping Jenny from catching his scent on the wind. He quickly realised that the little dog would not betray him. Once, while the Hunter was eating his lunch, she crept out of his sight and found the wolf hiding a hundred metres away in a young pine plantation. He let Jenny lick his lips and greet him, before sending her back to her place, by her master’s side.

  Later, Greycub stayed still in hiding behind some sea-smooth outcrops of rock halfway up the beach, as the Hunter made his way past the shale ridges. Greycub peered out from behind the seaweedy clusters to check on his progress. From the same hiding place he watched as the Hunter left the flat, climbed the cliff and disappeared behind the hawthorn thicket.

  As soon as the Hunter was out of sight he quickly slipped out from the rocks and jumped down behind the shale outcrops, where straight away he lay back down on the ground. There he waited five more minutes.

  He rose, concealed by the ridge, and continued at a steady trot, a pace which he kept up all the way to the gap. Just before the gap he began to run, so that he hurtled past that space at speed, as the Hunter had noted; but once past he did not slow down. He kept up the same fierce pace until he reached a point where the sand dunes came close to the shore. Here, an undulation in the ground hid the wolf as he swerved to one side, still running as fast as he could go, and at right angles to his original track cut straight across inland.

  Weaving between the dunes, keeping low to the ground, the wolf did not relax for several hundred metres. When he was sure he was out of sight he trotted on for a few minutes more, then he paused and began to sniff at the ground. He had found his own tracks where he had doubled back inland to the Hunter’s house. Now he trotted along, but with no great signs of caution until he drew near to the broken cottage on the top of the cliff. There, he slowed right down. First, he crept downwind of it and sniffed the air. Then he crept on his belly up to his own tracks as he had approached the ruins from the other side, days before. There was no new scent alongside them. Still Greycub kept up his caution and crept by a devious hidden route right up within the ruins. Only then was he satisfied the Hunter had not come this far, and he turned his nose down to the headland.

  The wind was in his face, and that was to his advantage as he could hear and smell any signs that his enemy was coming. He kept well to one side of his own tracks, checking every few metres or so that there was no one near him. When he finally came out above the hawthorn patch he stood and looked down. After the first glance he did not try and conceal himself. He could see the still form of the Hunter below him, see the thin steel of the murderous barrel. To one side of the Hunter was a bloody patch and there was Jenny, her throat cut, dead.

  Greycub made no noise. He slid like a snake down to the edge of the hawthorn cluster. The soft thick grass, cropped close by rabbits, made no noise under his weight. He sniffed softly around and found the gap where the Hunter had forced himself through into the middle of the thicket. Greycub breathed in the close, fresh sweat of the Hunter, and slid inside.

  The enemy lay oblivious to anything other than the barrel of his gun, which seemed to him to have an invisible spirit that reached down to the beach below. He expected the wolf to emerge any second. Greycub rustled the edges of the thorns as he entered the thicket, but the Hunter heard nothing, was aware of nothing but the focus of death in front of him. Even when the wolf lay down by his side, not more than a centimetre from his jerkin, he was unaware.

  Greycub lay thus for a few seconds, like a dog by its master’s side. Then he caught sight of the hand cradling the butt of the gun with one finger like a spring over the trigger. The wolf growled low and soft in his throat and reaching his head delicately to one side, took that hand in his jaws and crushed it down to the bones and through them.

  So shocked was the Hunter and yet concentrating so powerfully ahead that he screamed as he lay there still waiting for the wolf to appear at the end of his barrel. When he realised where the animal was, he bawled in fear and tried to stand up and get the gun in its face, but the twigs that had hidden him now trapped him. They clawed at his face and caught the gun, pushed him back against them. He screamed again as the wolf almost casually reached out for the other hand, but missed and tore the rifle from the man’s grasp instead.

  Trying to protect his eyes as best he could the Hunter forced his way through the bushes, desperate to escape the wolf, who howled and roared at his side, tore at the flesh in the back of his legs. At last they burst out of the thicket and the Hunter ran, stumbling across the patchy grass. Within seconds he was at the cliff’s edge; below the water foamed on the rocks; before him stood the wolf. The Hunter turned and leaped as far out as he could, praying he would miss the rocks, but preferring even them to the wolf’s fury.

  The water smacked into him and the shock of the cold stopped the pain for a minute. When he surfaced he was able to push away from the dangerous rocks and out into the clear sea. It was a still day, a calm sea. He held his breath, treading water and listening for the sound of Greycub swimming near him. But he was alone in the water; evidently the wolf did not like the cold sea.

  The Hunter lay on his back, catching his breath. He forced himself to breathe calmly. It was not far to the shore, only a matter of twenty or thirty metres, but he knew for certain that the wolf would be waiting there for him when he came ashore, to finish the business. He had no gun, he was wounded. He would certainly be killed.

  Not far offshore was a rock sticking above the water and the Hunter swam over to it. Using his elbows he hauled himself half out of the water to view the shore. Greycub was already there, sitting by the water, watching him and waiting.

  The Hunter lay half on the rock, half in the water. A small crab scuttled across the snails and weeds on the rock, waving its feelers in the water. It was late afternoon. Dusk was falling; it became dark very quickly in that northern climate and the water was so cold that the Hunter knew he could not survive for more than a few hours in it. He hung on the rock, watching the blood seeping out of his hand and clouding the water. It seemed impossible to escape. But he had already formulated a plan.

  First he tried various means of moving through the water. He found that by lying on his back and gently kicking his feet, using his hands only as rudders, he could move with the least pain. It had the added advantage of being silent; the wolf would not be able to hear his progress, and since the wind blew onto the sea, the Hunter knew that once darkness was complete, he could move in the water without the wolf knowing which way he was going.

  His only chance, he knew, was to find people. The wolf would not attack with other humans there.

  There were two houses within a few miles of each other to which he could go for help. One, the nearer, lay in the direction they had come in, about two miles along the coast. The other, in the opposite direction, was only the same distance away were he on foot; but to swim to it he had to negotiate the peninsula and that put an extra three miles on the swim, through unknown currents.

  Those three extra miles in his condition were terrible to consider. He was freezing cold, his hand was useless, he was still bleeding – the salt in the water kept the wounds open – and despite the clarity of his thinking, he was aware that somewhere inside was a deep shock from the savaging he had received, the nearness of death and perhaps above all, the fact that the wolf had defeated hi
m in the hunt. He was fairly clear he could make one mile, close to the coast, although at a severe cost; but four, far out to sea, frightened him. He had made up his mind to take the easier option when a thought came to him. He remembered that his neighbour up the coast was away. The man had told him some weeks before that he had business in Edinburgh that week. He had no option but to go round the peninsula.

  The Hunter’s thoughts were disturbed by a tickling sensation on his hand. Looking down he saw that a dozen tiny crabs had crept out of the weeds and crannies and were picking at the flesh of his ruined hand with their claws. Already his hands were so numb he could barely feel them. He shouted and thrashed, so losing his hold on the rock and scraping skin off his arm as he scrabbled to get his head above water. He panted and clung weakly to his rock. Inland, he saw Greycub had stood up at his shout and was watching him closely. After a minute, Greycub sat down again, his ears still pricked, to see what move his prey would make next.

  Dusk was coming down fast. The Hunter had one last trick up his sleeve and now he played it. He played it despite the ordeal ahead, despite his pain. He pushed himself away from the rock and swam not around the peninsula but up the coast, as if he were going in the completely opposite direction. He swam this way, going out to sea as he did so, while dusk fell and then, quickly following, the night. Only when he was in deep darkness did he turn round and swim in the opposite direction, out to the tip of the peninsula.

  He had been swimming twenty minutes and added half a mile and the best part of an hour onto his time in the water. But he had the satisfaction, before the darkness fell and he turned round, of seeing the wolf following him on the shore.

  It was his good fortune to be swimming with the tides, but he still had to fight the swirling currents around the outcrop that threatened to drag him against the rocks and suck him under. He had to keep as far from the rocky feet of the cliff as he could. All around the peninsula there was no way of getting to shore and in fact the house he was heading for sat on the edges of the first pebbly bay where it was possible for him to land. By the time, an hour later, he had reached the head of the peninsula he was deadly tired and had to keep resting, floating in the water, before the cold and fear of death forced him into movement. As he swam he kept looking to the cliffs above him, heavy and dark. But although the moon began to shed a little light between the clouds and the stars were bright, he could make out no shape following above him.